Movies typically are distributed to theaters on heavy reels of film. When received, a set of reels containing a movie is moved to a projector room of a theater, and there the film on the reels is spliced together. Pre-movie content such as advertisements, movie trailers, theater announcements, etc., is also spliced to the movie prior to showtime. Receiving and preparing a movie for presentation is a labor-intensive process.
Movies and pre-movie content can now be distributed and shown in digital format. Digital movies and digital pre-movie content can be stored as files on a disk drive of a computer system (e.g., a server), which in turn is coupled to a digital projector. At showtime, digital content is read from the disk drive and shown on a screen by the digital projector.
As described by S. A. Moreley in “Making Digital Cinema Actually Happen—What It Takes and Who's Going To Do It” (SMPTE 140th Technical Conference, Pasadena, Calif. , Oct. 31, 1998), “digital theater” provides capabilities beyond just showing digital movies using digital projectors. More specifically, Moreley describes a simple, graphical user interface which can make screen scheduling in a multi-screen theater (hereinafter a multiplex) easy, accurate, and flexible for a theater manager. Although no specific interface is described, Moreley suggests that by simple drag-and-drop action on a personal computer in the theater manager's office, a movie stored in memory can be scheduled to show at a certain time on a certain screen along with defined pre-movie content. The combination of a movie and defined set of trailers, advertisements, announcements, etc., will be referred to herein as a “playlist.” In digital cinema, a playlist is analogous to the final reel of film that a projectionist prepares for presentation, by splicing pre-movie content to a feature movie.
As noted, digital content of a movie is read from the disk drive of a server at showtime and provided to a digital projector. The digital projector, in turn, presents the digital content on a screen within an auditorium. Unfortunately, technical problems associated with the server or digital projector may prevent the presentation of a movie. For example, the server memory that stores the digital content may fail before showtime, a decryption key needed to decode the digital contents of the movie is not available for use, a lamp in the of the digital projector fails while the movie is being presented on the screen, or the digital content of the movie was not loaded onto the server prior to showtime, etc. Technical problems can be fixed by trained technicians, but the trained technicians must have access to the server and/or digital projector in order to diagnose the problem and provide a solution. To gain access to the server or digital projector, the technician must travel to the projector room that contains server and digital projector. The time it takes for the technician to travel to the projector room, adds to the delay in starting the movie or restarting the movie.